Why are rail fares so much more expensive than air travel?

As the candidates to become the next prime minister seek to out-cut each other on tax, the huge subsidies from taxpayers to rail passengers are certain to be slashed, writes Simon Calder

Competition from London King’s Cross to Newcastle and Edinburgh is thriving (Simon Calder)

One transport perennial tops the list of recurring topics for which there is an apparently insatiable readership. The headline is usually something along the lines of: “For less than the price of a Newcastle-London rail ticket, I flew instead via continental Europe.”

The latest, in May, involved a Sunderland football fan flying via Menorca to reach London for a football match. He claimed to pay £23 one way compared with “a return train fare of £260”.

Such stories rarely bear close scrutiny, since they inevitably compare the highest “walk-up” rail fare against budget airline tickets bought in advance. Yet a proportion of the travelling public laps up these articles. And such tales highlight a perennial problem: why are rail fares higher than air?